2006-07 Grants Awarded

The 2006-2007 grant awards are targeted to keep curriculum and technology up-to-date and provide support for positions throughout the district that positively impact classrooms as class sizes increase…Ultimately every child at every level in the Mequon-Thiensville School District benefits from these grants!

$412,205 TOTAL GRANTS

$75,000/English Language Arts Support Staff

This grant is available to re-establish as full-time the English Language support staff at each elementary school in the Mequon-Thiensville School District. This grant will help to provide full-time support to students who require additional assistance with language arts and reading skills. Providing such support not only benefits the identified students, but enables the classroom teachers to utilize precious classroom time more effectively for the remaining students.

$70,000/Academic Intervention Enrichment

This grant is available to fund two Academic Intervention and Enrichment positions- one at Lake Shore Middle School and one at Steffen Middle School. The middle school academic intervention and enrichment program is designed to support students who have been identified by their teachers in need of additional academic support. The overall goal of the Academic Intervention and Enrichment positions is to reduce and/or eliminate such deficits. Providing this support not only benefits the identified students, but also has broad positive classroom implications with increasing class sizes.

$50,000/Discretionary Spending Needs

Each building principal received $5,000 grant for discretionary funds in the Fall 2006 to support efforts to sustain excellence in the educational process during this fiscally challenging period. Although the grants were allocated on a building-by-building basis, the schools were encouraged to work together to support programs/needs that were consistent at the K-5, 6-8 and 9-12 levels. This collaborative effort resulted in the following uses of funds:

K-5: Purchase of “Write Source” books that support “The Six Traits of Writing” model for consistent delivery of instruction district-wide.

6-8: Computer labs were upgraded and expanded to meet the needs of larger class sizes.

9-12: Purchase of the Dragon Naturally Dictate software for special education students, purchase of a PC computer and computer lab expansion to meet the needs of larger classes, and continuing education/workshops for teacher of Advanced Placement classes.

An additional $20,000 discretionary funds grant was provided to the high school in Spring 2007. The high school principal along with the Curriculum council will determine the best use of these funds this Fall.

Information resources and equipment needs have been funded with eSAIL proceeds in the instructional media programs district-wide since 2005/06. This grant made possible through the KILT Fund improves student information literacy and creates a foundation for lifelong learning by providing students with the necessary technology and IMC resources.

Instructional media specialists, in conjunction with department curriculum chairs, were able to meet the specific needs at each school with the 05/06 fundraising proceeds and purchased items such as mounted classroom projectors, digital cameras, science equipment and DVD players in the elementary, middle and the high schools. These are items that typically were funded from individual school budgets; however, as a result of the financial pressure facing the district, these items would not be available in the district without the KILT Fund resources.

Grant proceeds from the KILT Fund/ eSAIL II will also fund IMC information resources and equipment needs for each of the six schools’ instructional media programs. The majority of these proceeds will help to fund the Instructional Media Tech staff at the K-5 level for the 2007/08 school year. The Instructional Media Tech staff at each elementary school in the school district will be re-established as full-time through the support of this grant.

$29,300/Community Resource Director

Year two of a two-year commitment to support the district’s Community Resource Director position. This grant award was partially funded with generous donations from HHS Booster Club and private individuals with the goal of leveraging the power of private money through fund development. Dennis Krause commenced this effort and focused on fund development efforts with alumni and major donors, established a framework for a major gifts campaign and naming rights, and made progress with positive PR via an alumni newsletter, public TV channel 13, local newspapers and school publications in the M-T community. Stay tuned for more information about the restructuring of this position for the upcoming school year.

$26,555/Donor Designated Grants

Individual donors have funded these grants to meet specific needs throughout the school district. The use of these funds is designated by the donor and includes funding items such as staff enrichment opportunities, technology, learning resources and equipment, and co-curricular programs. As a result of one of these donations from the Homestead High School PTSO, an entire computer lab was replaced and upgraded. The “old” computers from this lab were placed in the high school science labs and throughout the elementary schools to replace obsolete 8-10 year old computers.

$10,000 Staff Leadership and Development

This grant award is to provide staff enrichment and leadership development in order to sustain excellence in the educational process during this fiscally challenging period. Funds are available as follows: District-$3,000 Homestead-$2,000 Steffen, Lake Shore, Donges Bay, Oriole Lane and Wilson-$1,000 each school. This is the fourth year funding has been allocated to building administrators.

$7,000/English Language Learners

MTSD continues to seek ways to better support students who have English as a second language and who are performing at the lowest levels of English language proficiency. This grant is available to purchase the computer-based program, ELLIS Academic, to assist these students to become proficient in English. The grant proceeds are available to purchase software and equipment and to provide staff training with 2 stations at Homestead and 1 station at each of the middle schools.

$96,108/Many Hands Project

The Many Hands Project grant provides an unrestricted gift to the school board for the 2007/08 school year allowing them to consider the entire K-12 program when making the difficult budgeting decisions. The M-T School Board has indicated that these proceeds will be used to address specific class size concerns throughout the district once school registration is complete.

The initial launch of this project took place Spring 2007 to provide donors the opportunity to make a contribution to impact the 2007-08 budget. All school district families received a direct mail solicitation and fellow teachers solicited the MTSD staff. The community-wide launch of this fundraising project will take place fall 2007 as part of the Foundation’s Annual Campaign.